According to a Salesforce report, “Implementation of Salesforce will increase sales win rate by 26%, sales revenues by 28%, and sales productivity by 38%.” But just implementing Salesforce isn’t enough, you also need to make sure that it is adopted adequately by all your workforce. It is only by getting your Salesforce user adoption right, that you can skyrocket your ROI.
Here Are Some Of The Best Practices You Can Adopt To Increase Your Salesforce User Adoption
1. Leadership Buy-In Is Important
First and foremost, your leadership needs to understand and support the change, to inspire your employees to follow suit. Having the support of influential senior-level team members is one of the most effective adoption strategies you can trust. If your leadership is enthusiastic about Salesforce, they are leading by example, while they demonstrate their interest in using Salesforce’s features. They can show buy-in by starting conversations in Chatter, sharing insights and reports using analytics, reviewing Salesforce adoption metrics with team members, and appreciating active users.
When key executives and senior leadership communicate the benefits expected from Salesforce, they ensure that users are aware of the value their organization expects from the implementation and understand that they are the key drivers responsible for it.
2. Plan Your Training In Advance
While designing your Salesforce adoption strategy, it is essential to have a clear picture of the following:
- Which training method should you employ for your workforce, walk throughdemos, written instructions, videos, one-on-ones, group trainings, or something else?
- Which tools, like employee training software or digital adoption platform should you use?
- What would your ideal training duration be? Do you plan to keep meetings under 30 minutes, limit videos to two minutes or divide written instructions into small chapters?
3. Hire A Dedicated Salesforce Admin
This should not even be a question, unless you already have people in your organisation with deep Salesforce knowledge. But, usually that isn’t the case for both small and large organizations. And since a new CRM system requires staff members to learn the new software from scratch, expert guidance is required from a dependable expert. New users often need support with adding new users, for installation of apps from AppExchange, creating reports for management, etc. Thus, having an expert available in the organisation is essential for success.
4. Enable A Directed Salesforce Usage
It often happens when even after providing detailed training and regular updates, the end-user adoption doesn’t really grow as they should. Which is mostly due to the fact that even though the users are now acquainted with Salesforce, they still don’t want to step out of their comfort zone to shift to the new system. In order to overcome this, a directed usage of Salesforce needs to be enabled.
- Measures like slowly phasing out the use-cases available on the legacy system can direct users to have to start using Salesforce.
- Incorporation of processes that can be exclusively recorded on Salesforce will help.
- You can only communicate with your team using Salesforce Chatter.
- Schedule all your meetings in the Salesforce calendar.
- You can conduct performance reviews based out of the information from Salesforce dashboards and reports.
- Use third-party integrations like DocuSign or HelloSign for all e-signatures, or QuickBooks to run financial reports, that tie users back to Salesforce.
- Even gamification initiatives can be helpful to encourage peer-based adoption in employees.
5. Encourage Using The Trailblazer Community
The Salesforce Trailblazer community is an awesome place for Salesforce users, both novice and pro, to ask questions, resolve issues, discuss features, or share tips. This self-help platform helps users reduce confusion and frustration by providing them with a go-to resource backed by millions of experienced Salesforce users from across the globe. They can also take advantage of its networking opportunities, informative white papers and webinars and along with the interaction with their peers and Salesforce experts, they also gain interest and confidence in the value of Salesforce, which further motivates them to use more of its features.
6. Leverage Salesforce User Adoption Reports
Tracking users for defined feedback and adoption reports on an everyday basis can go a long way. And by leveraging these insights, you can figure out which users need to be targeted, if there are training material changes required, or how to plan your communications for future releases. There are ready to use apps you can get from AppExchange, like the Salesforce Adoption Dashboards by Salesforce Labs and InsideBoard, that can make your job much easier.
Some of the Important metrics you can use to ensure successful Salesforce user adoption are- user login rates, weekly or bimonthly, record creation rates, opportunity creation rates, contact creation rates, activity completion, open and closed tasks etc.
7. Encourage Feedback
The best and most efficient way to know whether your end users are satisfied with Salesforce, is to simply ask them. Gaining feedback, both anonymously and in group settings is key. Since, while some users may be comfortable discussing their frustrations publicly, others may prefer to share them through anonymous surveys. You can also do it through Salesforce Chatter groups, or even polls. You need to encourage feedback which is continuous and convenient, to encourage your users to be transparent, so you stay on top of how everything is going. Also, since Salesforce is all about sharing information, if you make that your top priority, you’ll notice a significant impact on your team’s Salesforce adoption.
8. Celebrate Successes
Successes big and small, can be rewarded each time an employee reaches a milestone. Early adopters and champions can be celebrated, thanked and rewarded with Salesforce-branded swag, even emails with “shout outs” can encourage continued success.
Salesforce implementation is a huge investment, so, adopting it to its full potential, with the right Salesforce partner is the best and safest way to go. Don’t let poor Salesforce adoption strategies affect your productivity and hinder your growth.
ETG Digital Can Help You Nail Your Salesforce User Adoption
Our Salesforce certified experts help reduce the manual creep that sets in after any Salesforce implementation. We make sure that your Salesforce CRM is being used optimally the way it ought to be, result…increased ROI.
Apart from that we understand the intricacies of your business and help set up custom solutions by placing Salesforce at the heart of it. This results in quick data migration into SF from your legacy platforms, better training of your resources to use SF and many more.
Ready to talk? Connect with us to know more about our Salesforce Managed Services offerings.
